Quietly, she started backing out. I’ll do a few more laps round the park, she thought, see if Hector wants an extra walk. Pretend I got an emergency call from someone with a bored Alsatian.
But Minton was halfway up the stairs before she could stop him, and about two seconds later she heard Lorcan yelling, ‘Not in the grouting! Not in the— Oh, you dim dog!’
She closed her eyes.
‘Hey, Juliet! School started forty-five minutes ago! Are you looking for a detention or what?’
His accent – funny, familiar, friendly – gave her the same sinking-into-the-sofa feeling as the opening credits of Come Dine With Me.
Maybe she didn’t need to go out. Maybe it was better to distract herself with DIY. She didn’t have to discuss Louise’s weird secret life.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, climbing the stairs. ‘Bit of a detour.’
Lorcan was sitting in the bath, in a Cream T-shirt covered in speckles of grouting. His arms were speckled too. As was his hair, which had curled and pouffed out in the humid air. He grinned when he saw her, and pointed at Minton, who’d jumped into the sink. ‘Your man there’s put his mark on the bathroom.’
There was a perfect small pawprint in the corner of one tile, where it joined the neat line along the bottom.
‘I can go over it later,’ he said.
‘No, leave it,’ said Juliet. ‘Like a signature. OK, where do I start?’
Lorcan seemed surprised at her determined attitude, but showed her how to pipe the grouting between the shiny tiles, talking and explaining in his easy way as she grappled with the applicator.
‘Hey, you’re good at this,’ he said, approvingly. ‘Can I get you to come and do next door?’
‘It’s just icing.’ Juliet finished the line. It was perfectly straight. It gave her a buzz to think that’d be there for years now. ‘Piece of cake. Literally. Now what?’
‘Start again up here. Gently . . . So did Spaniel Man keeping you chatting in the park?’ Lorcan asked. He sounded a bit too casual. ‘Where’s he taking you next? A recital? The ballet?’
‘No. I didn’t see him today.’ Juliet put the nozzle against the next tile. ‘Anyway, it’s not a date . . . situation.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ She squeezed and pulled, focusing on the squelch of the paste. The whole point of grouting was to fill her mind with something other than Michael and Louise, but Lorcan’s easy company was making it hard not to spill the lot.
‘He’s just a friend.’ Michael was handsome, considerate, the kind of man even Aunty Cathy would approve of, but Juliet couldn’t get past the fact that even if he’d been separated, he’d known Louise was married. He’d probably even met Peter over a breast pump.
She shook her head to get rid of the image. ‘He’s a client. I’m not ready for dates yet. The books say you’re supposed to wait until you’re not comparing people with your dead husband any more.’
‘Ah, the books,’ said Lorcan wisely. ‘And were you? Comparing him?’
Juliet considered. ‘It was more that he was very unlike Ben than like him. Cerebral. In a suit. Maybe that’s just as bad. Going for the polar opposite.’
‘I’m no expert –’ Lorcan busied himself cleaning a smear of grouting off the last tile – ‘but I don’t think you ever stop comparing, when someone’s made that sort of impact on your life. It’d be more weird if you could just wipe your mind clean, if they’ve meant something to you.’
Juliet glanced over. Lorcan seemed rather guarded. ‘Are you speaking from experience there?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Anyone special?’
He looked across and gave her a quick flash of his bright smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Life’s great tapestry. If you want the sunshine, you have to have the rain, as some great philosopher probably once said.’
Emer, thought Juliet. Maybe he held a torch for Emer. His first girlfriend, maybe, from home? She held his gaze for a moment, and they could both probably have said something funny, but Lorcan seemed as mired in gloomy thoughts as she was.
Juliet turned back to the grouting and sighed. ‘Well, the books say it’s meant to be easier after a year.’
‘Isn’t that coming up?’
‘Six weeks.’
It took her by surprise, even as she said the words. Six weeks didn’t seem very long to turn the last warm days of August into proper rain-whipped autumn. In six weeks the walk through the woods would turn from lush green and red berries to crisp dying foliage and conkers. It was already starting to turn, and this time she’d noticed for herself, instead of having Ben point it out.
‘Do you feel up to cooking tonight?’ Lorcan asked. ‘I stuck the oysters in your fridge, but if you can’t be bothered, I can get Emer to do—’
‘No, no.’ Juliet put the grouting syringe down. ‘I haven’t prepared oysters for ages.’ She pulled a long face. ‘Not since we were all in hospital for bank-holiday Monday, anyway.’
She let Lorcan look horrified for a couple of seconds and then said, ‘Joke.’
He laughed, and the sound of it made her feel better, at least temporarily.
‘I love oysters,’ he confided. ‘Takes me back to the west coast. Soda bread, pint of Guinness, roaring fire, attractive female company. Food of love, you know . . .’
Juliet was nodding, but she was actually thinking that she really hadn’t handled oysters for ages, not since a very posh wedding she and Kim had catered in Hanleigh. They weren’t the easiest thing to get right, and if she could screw up cookies and cupcakes, the sky was the limit for crustaceans.
Her confidence wobbled, and a terrible image of poor Lorcan with his head down the loo blazed across her mind. It was hardly a fair reward for bringing her gourmet foodstuffs. And if she was being totally honest, a little bit of her didn’t want him to stop thinking she was a gourmet chef. It was quite flattering, the way he’d raved about her flat biscuits as if they were Nigella Lawson’s.
‘Maybe we should let Emer do them,’ she said. ‘She’s the expert, and I’d hate to waste them. Why don’t I get some Guinness instead and take them next door? Is there enough for us all?’
Lorcan looked at her. ‘There’s enough for two. Or one greedy Irishwoman. Listen, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I go and get us some Guinness, and you call out for pizza? I fancy escaping the madhouse tonight. I’m sure there’s something on telly we can take the mick out of.’
‘But it’s such a mess,’ she started, and then heard herself. Always saying no, making excuses. Why?
Guinness and a pizza, and a night’s telly with someone cracking jokes on the sofa – it sounded like a five-star version of her usual solitary viewing habits. Minton would just have to move up on the cushions.
‘I’ll find the leaflets,’ she said.
‘Good girl.’ Lorcan grinned and began packing up his kit with methodical speed.
The best thing about Lorcan, Juliet thought, as she sank into the soft sofa cushion, clutching her can of Guinness a few hours later, was that he and Minton seemed to have reached an understanding.
The terrier was wedged between them, snoozing with his head territorially on Juliet’s leg, but his back paws pressed up against Lorcan’s skinny thigh. No growling, no suspicious wagging.
It was a bridge crossed. A sign that he was a real friend. Two and a half pints of Guinness made Juliet feel quite emotional about that, and she turned to point it out to Lorcan himself.
Or she would have done, if his head hadn’t been tipped back against the big cushion, his curls squashed in a dark halo, his mouth open as he breathed the heavy breaths of the pre-snorer. His head was thrown back, making his Adam’s apple stick out in his neck, and speckles of five o’clock shadow outlined where a gipsy-ish beard would probably spring up, given a day or two.
Apart from his socks, Lorcan looked quite rock’n’roll, and Juliet could imagine him backstage, as a roadie. Maybe even passed out just like this.
Juliet considered waking him up, but she was too comfortable herself. This was what her cosy back sitting room had been designed for. Snoozing in companionable silence with friends, after a decent pizza.
Here’s to many more, she said to herself, taking one last sip of Guinness before letting her own eyes droop shut too.
Chapter 21
The next day, however, Juliet knew she had to talk to Michael, about their relationship (such as it was) as well as about Damson, ideally before Louise changed her mind and went back. This whole affair business was so out of character for Louise that Juliet genuinely had no idea what she might do next. She had a very real fear that Louise might tell Michael that he owed it to both of them to date her tragic widowed sister – and that he, being decent, might do it.
She sat, going round in circles in her mind. Asking Diane’s advice was out, obviously, and her closest confidantes had always been Ben and Louise. Juliet didn’t have many close female friends these days, and this wasn’t something she’d know how to bring up over cupcakes with Kim.
I suppose I could always do nothing, she thought, helplessly. I don’t have to see him during the week; I could avoid the park on the days when he’s around. I could leave him a note: Damson thinks it might be better if we didn’t let our personal lives get in the way of her walking arrangements.
Doing nothing didn’t feel right any more. She couldn’t get away with doing nothing about fuses, or council tax. In her new life, alone, Juliet had to do something, even if it was wrong.
I’ll go and ask Emer, she thought. She’s bound to know what to do when your new date’s secretly been shagging your married sister.
Emer could smell a scandal a mile off and promptly despatched a wide-eared Roisin and Florrie upstairs with Spike to ‘play David Bowie’ with her make-up bag. It was the ultimate distraction and the twins didn’t wait for their mother to change her mind.
Emer sat Juliet down at her messy kitchen table, sweeping away various newspapers and plonking a tiny liqueur glass down in front of her. It was just them, she said: Alec was in Geneva, Salvador was at ‘band practice’, and Lorcan ‘the semi-pro pool hustler’ was down at the pub in town, playing pool for the Fox and Hound’s B-team.
‘He pretends to miss a shot or two,’ Emer confided, opening a bottle of sloe gin. ‘Doesn’t want the hassle of playing on the A-team. Now, what’s up? You’ve got that sad-dog look on you.’
Haltingly, Juliet explained as simply as she could, and Emer nodded, and topped up her glass when it got low. For a bottle that came with a homemade label, it was powerful stuff. Emer claimed she made it herself from a recipe that’s ‘probably illegal in the EU now’.
‘So what should I do?’ Juliet finished up.
‘You can stop calling your sister a cheating cow, for a start.’
‘But she is!’
‘Maybe she is, but it’s not helping either of you,’ said Emer. ‘It was well over before you met this Michael, right? You never know what’s going on inside people’s marriages, and you go a bit tonto when you have a baby. I’ve had four. Ask Alec. Actually, don’t.’
‘Not so tonto that you end up sneaking off with some bloke from your NCT class,’ snorted Juliet.
‘Well . . .’ Emer looked shifty. ‘I had my moments. You just feel as if your life’s under someone else’s control and if you’ve always been . . .’
‘A Stepford wife, like Louise.’
‘. . . in charge of yourself, it can make you do really stupid things, simply to prove you’re not just a milking machine. Hormones are powerful drugs,’ she said, widening her grey eyes. ‘Then add in the lack of sleep, and any other upset – like your sister’s husband dying, for example – and you find yourself acting like a loon. It’s like being drunk. You regret it in the morning, but you can’t help it at the time.’
‘You sound like Louise,’ said Juliet. ‘She likes to tell me how I won’t understand anything until I have kids of my own.’
‘Well, that’s kind of smug but not totally wrong,’ Emer sighed. ‘Did you ask her why it happened?’
Juliet fiddled with the stem of her glass. Wasn’t this all about her? Now it was about Louise. She felt a familiar irritation that everything in their family eventually swung that way.
Juliet shook her head. ‘Can we get this back to what I should do, please?’ she said, conscious that she sounded bit whiny. ‘I’m supposed to be seeing him, Michael, tomorrow in the park. What do I say?’
Emer didn’t answer at once. She gazed at Juliet in a way that Juliet found unnerving, then said, ‘Well, it’s easy enough. Do you like him? Do you want to see him again?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Juliet.
‘Then I’d leave it. The guy’s a free agent, so if you fancied him, and you felt ready for a relationship, I’d say go for it, but if you’re not that bothered . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I’d be more inclined to find out what’s going on with my sister.’
‘That’s not really answering my question, Emer.’
Emer made an impatient noise. ‘Juliet, I know you’ve been through some tough times lately, but your sister’s playing with fire here. . . She could probably use some sympathy!’ She knotted her forehead, trying to control her emotions. ‘OK, what should you do? Well, be honest. Tell him you’ve found out about him and Louise, and that it might be easier all round if you just cool things. You’ve only had one date. You spend more time with his dog than him. Tell him that. Tell him you want to concentrate on his fecking dog.’
Emer pushed herself away from the table and went to open and close cupboard doors loudly. ‘Do you want some crisps?’
Juliet stared into her tiny glass, feeling quite disorientated, and not just because of the sloe gin. That was the thing about Emer and Lorcan: they had no fear about saying exactly what they thought, instead of just thinking it, like her family. Without batting an eyelid, Emer had upended all the messy, resentful feelings she had collected about her big sister over the years and they now lay in front of her like bits of broken plate.
But how was she supposed to ask Louise what was wrong when Louise had spent the last six years telling her just how perfect her life was? That wasn’t how it worked. ‘Louise doesn’t need anyone’s advice, let alone mine.’
Juliet was aware of Emer slipping into the chair next to her, but she didn’t look up.
‘People change,’ said Emer softly. ‘And sometimes they do stupid things. You have to forgive them and move on. It’s what love is. A great, big, stretchy blindfold. And not in a kinky way, more’s the pity.’
Juliet’s mouth twitched in a reluctant smile, and Emer squeezed her shoulders.
‘I don’t mean to lecture you, but I had to watch all this going on, and it’s so frustrating to see it happen again.’
‘With . . . you and Alec?’ asked Juliet.
‘No.’ Emer shook her head. ‘With . . . Well, I don’t want to break confidences, but it’s someone we both know well. Someone who didn’t talk to his lady while she was going through tough times and buried himself in work instead. Went off on tours with Alec rather than asking himself whether . . .’ she narrowed her eyes in thought, searching for a way of blurring the details, and gave up ‘. . . whether it was normal for a woman to lose a baby and never refer to it again, to herself, to her man, to anyone. Men aren’t great talkers, so this . . . friend pretended it never happened either. It put a gap between them, and it’s human nature to fill that gap with someone else, who doesn’t know the miserable person you’ve become. So she did.’
‘Oh,’ said Juliet, seeing Lorcan in a new light. ‘And did this friend split up with his . . . lady?’
Lady. It sounded daft coming out of her mouth, yet entirely right in Emer’s. And Lorcan would treat his girlfriend like a lady. It was better than ‘woman’.
‘Eventually he did, yes. It was a big old mess, and he said he’d never go through that again with anyone else. Which is why he’s bunking up with his old friend from school and he
r insane gang of brats, and acting like a human pet-sitter for them while her husband’s away on tour.’ Emer clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘I think I may have said too much.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ said Juliet. ‘Perhaps it explains why this friend and I get on so well. We’re both recovering.’
Emer nodded sadly. ‘I wouldn’t trust him with anyone else, but I think you understand.’
‘I do,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s harder to find a friend than a boyfriend. At our age.’
‘Talk to your sister. Try to understand what must be going on. She must feel pretty lonely, if she’s on the family pedestal.’
‘I will,’ said Juliet. ‘Thanks.’
Hector’s owner, Barbara Taylor, had long since stopped visiting her sister in hospital, but she’d found the regular breaks from Hector so invigorating that his outings with Minton and Coco had carried on.
In fact, she confided, when Juliet went to collect him on Friday morning, Hector’s dog-walking had transformed her life. Not only had she met some lovely people at the Visitors’ Support Centre, but she and a very nice widower called Albert Barnes had started going to Pensioners’ Lunch Club together twice a week while Hector was strutting his way around the park, oblivious to his mistress’s new love interest.
‘I don’t want to introduce Albert to Hector just yet,’ she said, tucking Hector into his warm autumn-wear coat. ‘It’s too early days. Isn’t it, my love! Want to be sure he’s Mr Right!’
‘Well, congratulations,’ said Juliet. ‘Glad to be of service.’
‘I think they’ll get on.’ Mrs Taylor gazed fondly at Hector, as he gave Coco a rather intimate sniff. ‘They have so much in common.’
Juliet didn’t want to know any more, and hurried off, leaving Mrs Taylor spritzing herself liberally with Rive Gauche.
She’d made some effort with her appearance herself that morning too, although she’d tried not to make it too obvious. It was more for her own confidence than anything else. Still, she’d bothered with lip gloss and put on her new royal-blue coat, not the scruffy old parka of Ben’s, and was striding across the park feeling positive. Thick tights, boots and a nip in the air always did that for Juliet.